I. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to telecommunications. More particularly, the present invention is directed to method and apparatus for communicating using text messages.
II. Description of Related Art
In a typical text messaging system, such as may be used on the Internet, a user types a text message to be sent to a recipient in its entirety, such as with a personal computer. The message is then transmitted, when completed, to the intended recipient. Such text messaging systems may include instant messaging applications, short-message-system applications, short-mail applications, or email applications. In such applications, the process of entering text messages in their entirety is typically time consuming and prone to error due to typographical mistakes and the like. Such drawbacks are further magnified when the user is employing one of a number of communications devices that have a reduced number of keys for sending text messages. Such communications devices include, for example, wireless phones that are capable of connecting to the Internet and/or the World Wide Web.
Because such communications devices typically have twelve keys (traditional telephone keys) that are used for information entry, multiple letters of the alphabet, in their alphabetic order, are usually assigned to a subset of those keys. Typically the digits two to nine have three or four letters associated with them. Symbols and other special characters may be accessed via a menu that is available on the communications device, or a selection key (such as ‘*’ or ‘#’) may be available to change the key assignments to represent symbols and/or shift between upper and lower case letters. Thus, this limited key set on such communication devices does not easily lend itself to typing text messages in their entirety.
In this regard, methods such as “triple-tapping” are typically used to enter text. “Triple-tapping”, which is known, is an approach for text entry where a user taps a key once to enter a first letter (or symbol) associated with that key, a second time to enter a second letter or symbol associated with that key and a third time to enter a third letter or symbol associated with that key. In fact, since such devices typically have certain keys that have four letters (as was noted above) or symbols associated with them, a fourth tap would be needed to enter a fourth character associated with a key. Also, there is usually a time-out period in which successive taps must occur, otherwise the communication device assumes the letter corresponding with the last tap is the desired letter and enters that letter. If the user waits longer than this period to hit a successive key tap, deletion may be needed to correct the entry of an unwanted character. Therefore, such a method for text entry may be time consuming, inefficient and prone to error due the successive key taps needed to enter a single character.
Alternative methods of text entry have been implemented in an attempt to overcome the shortcomings of the triple-tapping technique. However, these solutions also have drawbacks. For example, an alternative text entry method for communication devices having limited key sets is the so-called T9 text entry technique. In the T9 technique, a user hits the keys associated with the desired characters or symbols only once, regardless of the alphabetic position (or order) of the desired character relative to the group of characters associated with a particular key. These key taps are then compared with a list of text strings and one or more “matches” may be presented to the user. The “matches” are based on the various combinations of letters that match text strings included in a list contained in the communications device, such as a mobile phone.
One drawback with T9 text entry is that if the desired text string does not exist in the text list, a user typically has to delete the entire entry, switch to a different text entry mode (such as to triple-tapping entry), and reenter the desired text string. Another drawback of the T9 approach is that it is not easily compatible with the entry of acronyms. Since most acronyms are not correctly spelled words, they are typically not recognized by such a technique. As with the triple-tapping technique, overcoming these aspects of such a text entry technique may be time consuming for the user and prone to error, such as including an incorrect “match” in a text message.
Another approach that has been used for communication devices that have limited keys, or text entry capabilities, is the use of collapsible keyboards that attach to such communications devices. While allowing a complete keyboard to be used, such an approach requires the user to transport another piece of equipment in order to have a more efficient text entry technique available to them. Because users of such mobile communications device typically want to reduce the amount of equipment they need to carry, such an approach is counter to that goal. Additionally, such an approach still has the drawbacks of a user typing entire text messages that were noted above (e.g. being time consuming and prone to error).